Saturday, April 05, 2014

What the system never seems to take into account is that undocumented people aren't isolated strangers in the land. Most have jobs, businesses, families, and often U.S.-citizen children. Many, many families include some members who have legal papers and some who don't. Obama is tossing out Grandpa and Auntie.

Under the Obama administration, some two million people have been deported.

This brave family is fighting a deportation order.

Waiting for an immigration reform that politicians promise but which never seems to come, many people have moved beyond fear.

Young people blocked an intersection chanting, awaiting arrest.

Police gave a verbal warning before taking seated protesters to the paddy wagon.

Father Richard Smith from my little Episcopal parish was among the 23 persons taken into custody.

***

On Friday afternoon I offered this comment at a Democratic Party-oriented website where people were bemoaning the pattern of fall-off in voting among Latinos in non-presidential elections. Why don't they understand how important it is to vote? they asked. My view:

Don't discount disillusionment among the most politically engaged young Latinos at the Obama administration's policy of using deportation as a fruitless "confidence building measure" with Republicans who aren't going to vote for immigration reform anyway. The Obama administration's deportation toll is apparently reaching 2,000,000 people as of this month. There were protest actions in 80 cities this weekend asking for relief. See #not1more. That's a lot of political capacity and energy that isn't going to go into raising Democratic turnout in November.

3 comments:

So is the answer no more borders? It only goes one way as you cannot just move to Mexico, or most of these countries, and start to work. Europe is facing the same thing. If Obama unilaterally chose to not enforce the laws, he could be impeached. If the law is on the books and you look the other way, what does that say about obeying other laws? Just the ones we like? I am not averse to reform but the question is going to what? What are the consequences of no more enforcement of our borders? Some would say one way to avoid breaking up families is not making a child born here automatically a citizen if their parents were not. I have no idea what they will do but when Reagan gave everybody amnesty who was here, we saw what that ended up doing-- nothing. And not everyone who got it was a top citizen. I know that from my personal experience in my extended family. It's not so simple as compassion. It's what to do that will really work or do we just give up on order?

Protests are going on all over, and there is hardly any news coverage.There was a time when anyone could come to this country, no questions asked. The tired, the poor... Your ancestors and mine. I think it's late in the day to decide that we are an exclusive and restrictive country. Those are wonderful photos, better than any I've seen in the papers or online.

We aren't restrictive and nobody anywhere is suggesting that. We have one million plus immigrants legally a year. We did not at one time have states either and a lot of other things. If we want to let anybody in, then do it legally and don't play around with amnesty for those already here and some exclusive new rules for admittance. It isn't just Mexico from where they come. Is there a limit to who this country can feed and provide jobs?

I have a dear friend where we have this discussion. She wants no borders, very liberal attitude, but she doesn't want somebody deciding to come live in her garage or build something on her property. Most of us do understand property rights.

The problem with immigration is making it legal and then enforcing whatever we do. I know it sounds good to say no mas but does it work in a practical sense? Some say no borders would hurt our poor the most.

What is this blog for?

This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right. When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters.

I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.

Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.

I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005. I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.

About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. Will work for justice.